Spec's for Programming

At least a 13" ( preferrably 15") screen, 512G SSD, i5 with 8G of ram.

Staring at a screen for 16 hours a day and looking a missing ( or ; will blind you on an 11" screen.

For example my mobile computer is a nearly maxed out 15" MBPr ( I did not get the 1TB drive ).

 

Using a 11" screen although very portable is a terrible choice for programming. Straining to read on a 11" screen is bad for your eyes not to mention the lack of screen real estate will be hassle when trying to code. I would consider at the least the 13", if not I would go for a 15" laptop.

 

The 11" is too short. Unless your apps are nothing more than Hello World, or you like scrolling then I would go big or go home. The Retina is the better option for a programmer.

 

Any machine could do that.
If you get the 11', just get an external display.

 

I use a 11" Air i7/8GB/256GB to do programming, for multiple platforms. I installed VMWare Fusion and set up Linux and Windows VMs. For 95% of time I use an external display.

Occasionally I used it without external display. It was OK, though not productive.

IMHO, as for 11" vs 13", 13" is only marginally better than 11" when external display is not used. The screen of BOTH is OK for occasionally programming but not for productivity. The 13" is still small for programming.

 

Definitely go for the 13", 768px is terrible for developing with an IDE such as Xcode.

Also go for a machine with 8GB RAM (you'll have lots of stuff open at once) and an SSD with at least 256 GB. IDE's and SDK's don't tend to come in with small storage footprints!

 

I am in the same boat. I want to get a 13" Macbook Air and I'm a compsci major.

I will probably end up buying the 13" MBA, i7, 512GB. Reason being that I thought the 13" Retina screen would help but I highly doubt that's the case. 13" is still 13" and so I rather save the money and buy an external monitor. The only case I have for the rMBP is the one extra thunderbolt bolt and the HDMI port. It would be nice to drive two monitors.

 

If budget with larger notebooks is an issue, buy mini + external display. You can get a 23-24" down to $300-400, and it's a much better setup for that. An 11" is crammed with code alone. If you have a debugger or any additional tool panes up, it will be even more ridiculous.

You're really looking at code that many hours a day? I also don't think the missing semi-colon thing should be a lasting problem or hard to track down. It's not like his whole app will be in one file .m file .

 

Yes, I'm busy. Today I started at 0615 and will not stop until around 2330. I will take an hour or so for lunch, then an hour to go running, and about 30 minutes for dinner, but otherwise I'm working on code. It's not like this everyday. Yesterday, I ocean kayaked with the pretty lady, yes I'm burnt.

I may get out of the semi colon business in the very near future -> Swift.

 

The ocean kayaking sounds awesome, but I don't know that I could spend that much time staring at an IDE. I don't mind semicolons. As for Swift, I glanced through Apple's ebook. Other than that I haven't really looked at it. I haven't done work hours like yours in a very long time.